Auerbach Business Strategies for the Next Generation Network doc

BUSINESS STRATEGIES
FOR THE
NEXT-GENERATION
NETWORK
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd iSeel_AU8035_C000.indd i 11/2/2006 3:58:27 PM11/2/2006 3:58:27 PM
Architecting the Telecommunication
Evolution: Toward Converged Network
Services
Vijay K. Gurbani and Xian-He Sun
ISBN: 0-8493-9567-4
Business Strategies for the
Next-Generation Network
Nigel Seel
ISBN: 0-8493-8035-9
Chaos Applications in
Telecommunications
Peter Stavroulakis
ISBN: 0-8493-3832-8
Context-Aware Pervasive Systems:
Architectures for a New Breed of
Applications
Seng Loke
ISBN: 0-8493-7255-0
Fundamentals of DSL Technology
Philip Golden, Herve Dedieu, Krista S Jacobsen
ISBN: 0-8493-1913-7
Introduction to Mobile Communications:
Technology, Services, Markets
Tony Wakefield
ISBN: 1-4200-4653-5

IP Multimedia Subsystem: Service
Infrastructure to Converge NGN,
3G and the Internet
Rebecca Copeland
ISBN: 0-8493-9250-0
MPLS for Metropolitan Area Networks
Nam-Kee Tan
ISBN: 0-8493-2212-X
Performance Modeling and Analysis of
Bluetooth Networks: Polling, Scheduling,
and Traffic Control
Jelena Misic and Vojislav B Misic
ISBN: 0-8493-3157-9
A Practical Guide to Content Delivery
Networks
Gilbert Held
ISBN: 0-8493-3649-X
Resource, Mobility, and Security
Management in Wireless Networks
and Mobile Communications
Yan Zhang, Honglin Hu, and Masayuki Fujise
ISBN: 0-8493-8036-7
Security in Distributed, Grid, Mobile,
and Pervasive Computing
Yang Xiao
ISBN: 0-8493-7921-0
TCP Performance over UMTS-HSDPA
Systems
Mohamad Assaad and Djamal Zeghlache
ISBN: 0-8493-6838-3

Testing Integrated QoS of VoIP:
Packets to Perceptual Voice Quality
Vlatko Lipovac
ISBN: 0-8493-3521-3
The Handbook of Mobile Middleware
Paolo Bellavista and Antonio Corradi
ISBN: 0-8493-3833-6
Traffic Management in IP-Based
Communications
Trinh Anh Tuan
ISBN: 0-8493-9577-1
Understanding Broadband over
Power Line
Gilbert Held
ISBN: 0-8493-9846-0
Understanding IPTV
Gilbert Held
ISBN: 0-8493-7415-4
WiMAX: A Wireless Technology
Revolution
G.S.V. Radha Krishna Rao, G. Radhamani
ISBN: 0-8493-7059-0
WiMAX: Taking Wireless to the MAX
Deepak Pareek
ISBN: 0-8493-7186-4
Wireless Mesh Networking: Architectures,
Protocols and Standards
Yan Zhang, Jijun Luo and Honglin Hu
ISBN: 0-8493-7399-9
Wireless Mesh Networks

Gilbert Held
ISBN: 0-8493-2960-4
AUERBACH PUBLICATIONS
www.auerbach-publications.com
To Order Call: 1-800-272-7737 • Fax: 1-800-374-3401
E-mail:
OTHER TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOOKS FROM AUERBACH
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd iiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd ii 11/2/2006 3:58:42 PM11/2/2006 3:58:42 PM
Boca Raton New York
Auerbach Publications is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Nigel Seel
BUSINESS STRATEGIES
FOR THE
NEXT-GENERATION
NETWORK
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd iiiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd iii 11/2/2006 3:58:42 PM11/2/2006 3:58:42 PM
Auerbach Publications
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
© 2007 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Auerbach is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-8493-8035-9 (Hardcover)
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-8493-8035-8 (Hardcover)
This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reprinted
material is quoted with permission, and sources are indicated. A wide variety of references are

listed. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author
and the publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or for the conse-
quences of their use.
No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying,
microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access www.
copyright.com ( or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC)
222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that
provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted a
photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seel, Nigel.
Business strategies for the next-generation network / Nigel Seel.
p. cm. (Informa telecoms & media ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8493-8035-8 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8493-8035-9 (alk. paper)
1. Computer networks. 2. Business planning. 3. Strategic planning. I. Title.
TK5105.5.S389 2007
004.6 dc22 2006034583
Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

and the Auerbach Web site at

Seel_AU8035_C000.indd ivSeel_AU8035_C000.indd iv 11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM
v

Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
About the Author xiii
PART I: TECHNOLOGY
1  e Strange Death of Broadband ISDN 3
2  e Next-Generation Network and IMS 13
3  e Next-Generation Network and TV 51
4  e Next-Generation Network and IT Systems 73
PART II: TRANSFORMATION
5 Bureaucracy and Treacle 93
6 Telecoms Market Structure 109
7 Choosing the Right People 119
8 Case Study: A Transformation Program 139
PART III: BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES
9 Worrying about Skype 155
10 Spectrum Auctions 169
11  e Trial of Rete Populi 185
12 Machines Who Talk 207
PART IV: BUSINESS STRATEGIES
13 NGN Strategies for Incumbents 225
14 NGN Strategies for Alternative Network Operators 241
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd vSeel_AU8035_C000.indd v 11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM
vi 
15 NGN Strategies for Capturing the Consumer Market 263
16 Conclusions 277
Glossary 281
Index 291
Contents
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd viSeel_AU8035_C000.indd vi 11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM

vii
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all of the following whose advice I relied upon implicitly as
I put the book together: Sue Davidson for her advice about how NGN carriers
can address the SME market; Rob Evans for an insightful discussion of NGN
transition issues in an alt-net; David Hilliard, formerly CEO at Mentor and a
source of great encouragement; Andy MacLeod, formerly CEO at Verizon Europe,
interviewed in chapter 12 and a source of deep insights into the telecom industry
and its possible futures; Mike McTighe, formerly CEO of a number of carriers,
for his strategic insights into industry evolution; Carol Olney for her authorita-
tive views on the challenges of IT modernization; Bob Partridge, interviewed in
chapter 13, for the enormous experience and industry wisdom he shared with me;
Stephen Pulman, professor at Oxford University, who is interviewed in chapter 12
and provided an authoritative source on all aspects of natural language processing;
Mick Reeve, formerly BT’s chief architect, who reviewed a draft of chapter 13
and provided much advice; Alex Seel, who reviewed a number of chapters from
the point of view of a telecom programmer (not entirely the intended audience);
Dr. Ian Taylor, who reviewed a draft of chapter 11 and whose book on P2P is
recommended reading; Yuda Tuval of Mentor for initial encouragement; Andrew
Wheen for valuable feedback; Clare Youell for support all the way through, and
the fi gure in chapter 8; and those contributors who have to remain anonymous,
all of whom gave so generously of their time.
In regard to the original commissioning of the book and its production, I
would like to thank Gavin Whitechurch of Informa, who fi rst suggested that I
might write this book; Rich O’Hanley, publisher at Auerbach Publications (part
of the Taylor & Francis Group), who commissioned the book and supported me
throughout the year-long writing process; Catherine Giacari, project coordinator,
who helped me with layout and fi gures; Marlyn Littman of Nova Southeastern
University, for a thorough, helpful review of the fi rst draft, which led to a number
of additional topics being included in the fi nal text; Julie Spadaro, Taylor & Francis

project editor, for so expeditiously organizing the overall production of the book;
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd viiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd vii 11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM
viii 
and Lynn Goeller of EvS Communications for handling the copy editing, page
layout, indexing and proofreading.
All responsibilities for any omissions or errors are, of course, my own.
Acknowledgments
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd viiiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd viii 11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM11/2/2006 3:58:43 PM
ix
Introduction
 is is not the fi rst attempt to build the Next-Generation Network (NGN). Back
in the 1980s, when the carriers controlled innovation, they had come up with a
wonderfully complex architecture for voice, data, and video services, called the
Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (Broadband ISDN).  is archi-
tecture was layered upon a standard protocol called ATM—Asynchronous Transfer
Mode—and those 53-byte cells were deceptively simple. All the real complexity
was in the multiple adaptation layers, which allowed very diff erent services to
be successfully adapted to and carried by the relatively uncomplicated ATM
transport layer, and in the signaling required to make, manage, and tear-down
connections.
As we all know, Broadband ISDN took years of preparation, as the standards
bodies tried to design in every conceivable requirement before the standard
could be fi nalized and equipment could be built. In the meantime, the Internet
happened, using a good enough protocol which couldn’t do one tenth the things
ATM was supposed to do. But the things it could do were what were needed back
then, and it was extensible in service.
 e current concept of the NGN is emphatically not the Internet.  e NGN
is in reality Broadband ISDN mark 2, leveraging Internet technologies. So is it
all going to end in tears again? Hard to say—the NGN specifi cation roadmap
is now in the hands of all the usual carrier standards bodies, the ITU-T, ETSI,

ANSI, etc., and stretches out past 2009. However, unlike with ATM, the new
NGN is leveraging protocols and standards that have some real-world experience
behind them, and it’s tackling problems of multimedia service networking that
we actually have. So it’s got to be in with a chance.
Let’s assume the new NGN is one of the right answers to the world’s networking
problems right now (many would disagree, but the premise of this book is that
it is near enough). A related question is whether carriers will be able to make the
transition from their current networks, processes, and systems to the next-genera-
tion network. It will neither be easy nor cheap, and some certainly won’t make
it. Let me put it like this. Carriers are typically large, complex organizations with
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd ixSeel_AU8035_C000.indd ix 11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM
x 
poor customer relations and an unusual resistance to change.  e next-genera-
tion network is a concept and architecture for a complete reconstruction of the
way carriers work, based on Internet technologies. Putting the two together, it is
obvious—we are going to have a problem.
It is worth reminding ourselves how the Internet came to be. It was certainly
not driven by the carriers (although it used their pre-existing transmission and
switching networks).  e Internet was driven by new-economy vendors like
Cisco and a new class of communication companies, the ISPs. We even had a
name for the new and old guard: net-heads vs. bell-heads, those who “got it” and
those who didn’t.
Well, 10 years later carriers have belatedly “got it,” or at least the technology
part.  e Internet is real and its technology base is here to stay.  e old carrier
dreams of ATM and Broadband ISDN, which they clung to for so long, have
fi nally evaporated.  e task now is to re-tool with IP-based platforms. Will the
carriers succeed in remaking themselves? Has the Internet merely been a historical
transient, a brief period of glasnost before the reimposition of centralized carrier
control—business as usual?
When I worked as a carrier architect at Bell-Northern Research, a precursor

to Nortel, it seemed to me that our carrier customers had it easy. Carriers had
networks, customers, and recurrent revenues. If they did nothing but keep their
equipment running, they got paid. By contrast, in Nortel, if we didn’t make new
sales every day, we didn’t get paid at all. We had to struggle for lunch. Many of
the people who work at carriers, perhaps even most of them, are not directly
involved in the day-to-day operations that keep the cash fl owing in.  ey do
things like network planning, product development, marketing, and strategy.
Yet at the heart of the carrier is a rigid, process-centric hierarchy: carriers have
lots of customers, and serving them all needs a complex machine of processes,
people, and IT automation.
Changing this machine is diffi cult: much easier just to layer the new upon the
old, a technique as old as history. When Troy was excavated in modern Turkey, it
was found that the site was composed of nine cities layered one upon the other,
dating from 3000 B.C. to Roman times. Carriers have their historical layers,
too: ancient networks like Telex, asynchronous (PDH) transmission on co-ax or
microwave, strange pre-digital voice switches (although most of these are now
gone), and X.25 data switches.  ese are layered below circuit switches, frame
relay switches, and the more modern SDH transmission network. Finally, we see
the most modern layers such as wave-division multiplexing, IP/MPLS routers,
and SIP servers transmuting to IMS call session control function devices in the
next-generation network.  is forest of acronyms, by the way, is explained in
chapter 2.
 e 40 or 50 years of network history embodied in the most venerable of
our incumbent carriers is paralleled by a similar museum of IT automation: old
computers, old programming languages, and old paradigms of computer network
Introduction
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd xSeel_AU8035_C000.indd x 11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM
 xi
architecture.  e processes and manual work-arounds that made all this operate
end-to-end are still there, and it’s just too expensive to modernize them, given

that these are legacy products and platforms. It’s just that these legacies have real
customers with real revenues and the case for keeping them alive seems to win
out year after year.
Given the sheer density of distinct roles, processes, automation systems, and
ad hoc interfaces needed to keep most carriers in business, the process of trans-
formational change feels like wading through treacle.
Initiatives spawned by senior management get bogged down in the middle
management bureaucracy and peter out.
Expensive programs fl ow around the edges of the real problems and fail,
wasting millions.
Incremental programs—adding something new—often do succeed, but
leave the legacy heartland untouched, and operational costs continue to rise.
Yes, transforming carriers is hard work and attempts at transformation fail far
more often than they succeed.
Paradoxically, vendors fi nd change easier than carriers. Lacking recurrent rev-
enue fl ows, the vendors are more exposed to the volatility of the market—a fact
plainly seen after the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2001–02. Market forces
smash though the organization and it has no alternative to laying off people,
closing some divisions, and reorganizing others.  is brutal, creative destruction
removes bureaucratization, incompetence and now-redundant activities, and
forces modernization. But on the carrier side, even the bankrupt carriers were left
operationally intact so they could maintain services to their customers. Clearly
superfl uous staff were laid off , but internal products, processes, and automation
were not much changed.
 e fi rst part of this book, “Technology,” starts with a review of the failure of
the previous attempt by carriers to re-tool for the future—Broadband ISDN. I
then examine in detail the Next-Generation Network as a set of technologies and
capabilities supporting multimedia interactive services, specifi cally IMS.  e third
chapter looks in detail at TV delivered over the Internet and Video-on-Demand,
but I pay equal attention to business models and changes in the value chain. Finally

in this section, I take a look at carrier IT renovation programs.
In the second part of the book, “Transformation,” I look at how carriers have
attempted to remodel themselves as IP companies. Carriers are perennially trying
to move their businesses away from being “mere bit carriers,” but we are entitled
to ask whether it is always and everywhere such a bad thing to be a bit carrier,
and what the alternatives really amount to.  e alternatives open to a carrier
depend on its position in the marketplace—is it a large generalist, a small niche
player, or stuck in the middle? I review some infl uential thinking about market
structure and company strategies.



Introduction
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd xiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd xi 11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM
xii 
Business strategies for next-generation networks are about more than technol-
ogy and marketing. I next examine how to choose the right people and the right
roles for transformation projects. It seems obvious that the personal characteristics
and skills needed to drive change are markedly diff erent from the more operational
and routinist aptitudes needed to run a well-oiled (or even badly oiled) machine,
but somehow this has been ignored in program after failing program. I fi nish this
section with a “worked example” of how to start up a major change program, and
show how personal style can be as important as methodology.
In the third section of the book, “Business and Technology Issues,” I identify
some more innovative business models. Service Providers such as Vonage and
Skype have redefi ned what voice means for the portfolio, but what has been the
carrier response? Proposing to block their traffi c has had at least as much air time
as more forward-thinking business models and public resources such as Spectrum,
which have hitherto been used “free” by carriers, are at last being monetized
through such mechanisms as public auctions. A good thing or a bad thing? I then

look at Peer-to-Peer Networks, both how they work and the associated politics,
economics, and security issues. Finally in this section, I examine the prospects
for the automation of natural language understanding and production. You may
have had the experience of “talking” with an automated call center agent to book
a fl ight or a hotel. Unless your transaction was extremely conventional and rou-
tine, you may have encountered problems that resisted all attempts to “back out.”
Our next-generation networks are still primarily mechanisms for transporting
conversation, yet the networks themselves do not understand what is being said.
If this changes over the next few years, what will be the implications?
Finally in the fourth part, we get down to “Business Strategies” in detail. My
anchor concept here is that of value nets and market power. Business strategy is
fundamentally economic, and is about securing market positions where premium
returns can be achieved. In both consumer and business segments, carriers and
the NGN are embedded within broader value nets, including content providers
and systems integrators. Who wins in this game? I look fi rst at prospects for the
incumbents, then at strategies for alternative, competitive network operators, and
fi nally at the consumer market. I conclude that all is not doom and gloom, but
the relentless encroachment of commoditization is in fact the back story.
Will the next-generation network mark the reimposition of central control from
the carriers, damping down the spirit of freedom and creativity that fl owered on
the back of the unplanned and unanticipated Internet? I address this fundamental
issue in the conclusion.
For additional information and links to relevant resources, go to the Web site
associated with this book: />Please note that names and dialogue details have been changed throughout,
and where roles are mentioned, “he” should be read as “he or she.”
Introduction
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd xiiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd xii 11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM
xiii
About the Author
After a period as a mathematics teacher and commercial programmer, Nigel Seel

spent the 1980s in the UK lab of IT&T working on formal methods for software
development, artifi cial intelligence, and distributed computing. He also completed
his Ph.D. in artifi cial intelligence and mathematical logic.
In the 1990s Nigel worked in Bell-Northern Research (Nortel’s R&D orga-
nization) and later Nortel itself as a carrier network architect, latterly being lead
designer for Cable & Wireless’s £400 million UK network rebuild in 1998–99.
He then freelanced as an independent designer until 2001 when he was hired by
Cable & Wireless Global as chief architect, and relocated to Vienna, Virginia.
Subsequently he was appointed vice president for portfolio development.
Following the collapse of C&W Global Nigel relocated back to the UK. After
more freelance consultancy, he worked with the UK management consultancy
Mentor from April 2004 through January 2006. He is currently freelancing again
through his company Interweave Consulting.
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd xiiiSeel_AU8035_C000.indd xiii 11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM
Seel_AU8035_C000.indd xivSeel_AU8035_C000.indd xiv 11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM11/2/2006 3:58:44 PM
1
TECHNOLOGY
I
AU8035_P001.indd 1AU8035_P001.indd 1 11/3/2006 11:15:38 AM11/3/2006 11:15:38 AM
AU8035_P001.indd 2AU8035_P001.indd 2 11/3/2006 11:16:03 AM11/3/2006 11:16:03 AM
3
Chapter 1
The Strange Death
of Broadband ISDN
Introduction
In the early nineties I was working for Bell-Northern Research, then Northern
Telecom’s R&D organization (now Nortel), as a carrier network architect. I recall
fl ying from the UK into the depths of the Canadian winter to attend a Broadband
ISDN conference.  ese days, you may be forgiven for being somewhat hazy
as to what Broadband ISDN actually was, but back in the early nineties it was

absolutely the next big thing. B-ISDN
—Broadband Integrated Services Digital
Network
—was the universally regarded architecture for the future multimedia
carrier network, the Next-Generation Network of its time, underpinned by a
packet technology called Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM; Bannister, Mather,
and Coope 2005). Today, ATM is receding into history, but at the time we all
knew it was the future of communications. All traffi c: voice, video and data, was
to be carried in 48-byte packets, with a 5-byte header for routing and control.
 is 53-byte packet was called an ATM cell.  e magic (and small) numbers of
48 and 53 bytes came about because the main function of ATM, in the carrier
view, was to carry voice, minimizing cell-fi ll latency.
Most data packets, by contrast, are large (e.g., 1,500 bytes) so as to minimize
packet header overhead. To carry a large data packet over ATM (Figure 1.1) it is
necessary to segment it into small chunks, each of which can be carried in one
ATM cell. Extra control information is required to ensure it can be properly put
together again at the far end in the right order.  e signifi cant extra overhead
in segmentation and reassembly, plus the overhead of all those ATM headers, is
called the ATM cell tax. IP people in particular deeply resented ATM for this
Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 3Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 3 11/2/2006 2:54:49 PM11/2/2006 2:54:49 PM
4  Business Strategies for the Next-Generation Network
reason. However, at the time, IP people did not do voice, and so were not espe-
cially infl uential.
Until quite recently, voice was the overwhelmingly dominant traffi c on the
network, so the networks were designed around it. In a traditional telephone
call, the analogue voice signal from the telephone handset is sampled at the lo-
cal exchange 8,000 times per second and the audio level of each voice sample is
encoded in 8 bits (giving 256 possible amplitudes) for an overall 64-kbps signal.
In this pre-ATM reality, each voice sample byte is then assigned a “time-slot” and
sent across the carrier network to the far-end exchange serving the conversational

partner.  e network has to be timed to exquisite accuracy so that there is virtu-
ally no possibility of losing a voice sample, or of incurring diff erential delay of
successive time slots (jitter).  e overall delay (latency) is also minimal, as there
is no queuing of timeslots.  e circuit-switched telephone network is excellent
for basic, vanilla voice. However, all of these desirable properties go by the board
when we try to packetize voice in ATM.
In that stuffi ly-warm, lofty, log-cabin-like conference center in frozen Quebec,
leading ATM experts in the fi eld were discussing how to maintain the end-to-end
quality of voice calls given that:
 e queuing of ATM cells in ATM switches causes signifi cant cross-
network delay (latency).
Cell queuing times in the ATM switches vary randomly causing jitter.
Cells are discarded when the queues in the switches get too big, causing
clicks and gaps.



Destination
Address
Data
Frame
Check
Source
Address
HPL
HPL
HPL
HPL
HPL
HPL

ATM Cell – 53 Bytes
48B payload
5B header
Convergence, segmentation and reassembly sub-layers (extra framing/bytes)
ATM cells
Data Packet
Figure 1.1 Adapting service traffi c to ATM.
Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 4Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 4 11/2/2006 2:55:08 PM11/2/2006 2:55:08 PM
The Strange Death of Broadband ISDN  5
I put up my hand and asked why some of the smartest people in the industry
were trying to fi gure out how to put back at the far end of the call the quality of
service they had gratuitously thrown away at the near-end (by “cellifi cation” and
then ATM network transit). Particularly when we had a perfectly good circuit-
switched network, already in service, which simply treated voice properly. I do
not recall getting a compelling answer.
My question was both irritating and disingenuous. At the time everyone knew
that the circuit-switched network had no future. It had been designed from top-
to-bottom to do only one service well: to carry bandwidth-limited voice calls
(around 180–3,200 Hz). For reasons later recounted by David Isenberg (1997),
trying to get this one-product network to do anything else was either impossible
or hideously expensive and ineffi cient. Service innovation was only possible by
the carriers themselves, not third parties, and was glacial in pace. No, carrying
all traffi c in packets or cells was the only way to liberate services from hard con-
straints: if that made it harder to do real-time “isochronous” services like voice,
then so be it.
Why Broadband ISDN?
 e carriers knew they had to packetize their networks, and that they needed a
new architecture (B-ISDN) supported by a number of new protocols. Here are
some of the functions carriers thought they wanted to support.
Set up a multimedia video-telephony call between two or more people

(involves signaling).
Carry the call between two or more people (involves media transport).
Permit access to music, TV programs and varied computer applica-
tions.
Allow computers to communicate effi ciently at high speeds.
Each of the above functions would be a chargeable service, leading to billing the
customer. Carriers also needed to provision, operate, assure, manage, and monitor
their networks as per usual.
When carriers contemplate network transformation or modernisation, they
like to huddle amongst themselves in the standards bodies to agree their target
services and design a standardized architecture.  e latter consists of a number of
components, implemented using switches and servers, plus standardized message
formats (protocols) to provide the intercommunication. It’s easy to see why this
ends up as a monolithic and closed activity—it all has to be built by the vendors,
slotted together and then work properly. Getting the architecture into service
is usually a highly complex and multi-year activity, and the cost will have to be




Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 5Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 5 11/2/2006 2:55:11 PM11/2/2006 2:55:11 PM
6  Business Strategies for the Next-Generation Network
covered by more years of revenue-generating service. Supporters of the model
have pointed to the scalability and reliability of modern networks, the account-
ability, which comes from centralized control, and the sheer functionality that
can be put in place by organizations with access to large capital resources and
internal expertise.
Critics point to the monopolistic tendencies of capital-intensive industries
with increasing returns to scale, the resistance of carriers to innovation and the
overall sluggishness and infl exibility of the sector.  ey note that circuit-switched

networking began in the 1860s and that it had taken a further 130 years to auto-
mate dialling and digitise calls. By the time I was asking my question in Canada,
B-ISDN had already been in gestation for around 15 years with no signifi cant
deployment.
 e Internet, of course, also took its time to get started. TCP/IP came into
service in 1983 and by the late eighties research groups were using e-mail and
remote log-in.  e fusion of hypermedia and the Internet gave us Web browsers
and Web servers in 1993–94 and launched the explosion in general Internet usage.
By 1996 there was already a debate within the vendor and carrier community:
was the future going to be IP and was the B-ISDN vision dead? It took a further
ten years for the industry to completely take on board the affi rmative response.
 e Internet always ran on carrier networks. More precisely, the basic model
of the Internet comprised hosts (computers running an IP stack and owned by
end users) and routers (sometimes called gateways) forwarding IP packets to their
correct destinations.  e routers could be operated by any organization (often
maverick groups within carriers) and were interconnected using standard carrier
leased lines. Almost all hosts connected to the routers by using dial-up modems
at each end across switched telephone circuits. So from a carrier perspective,
the Internet was simply people buying conventional transport and switched
services—the specifi city of the Internet was invisible. In truth, the Internet was
beneath the radar of the B-ISDN project.
The Internet as the Next-Generation Network
We already mentioned the many complex functions that need to be integrated to
make a carrier network work. It’s like a highly-specialized car engine. So where was
this function for the Internet? Who was doing it? In what is the central mystery of
the Internet, no one was doing it.  e basic Internet is unusable, because it does
nothing but provide protocols to allow packetized bits to be transferred between
hosts (i.e., computers). It is pure connectivity. However, pure global connectivity
means that any connected computer application can be accessed by any other
computer on the network. We have the beginnings of a global services platform.

Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 6Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 6 11/2/2006 2:55:11 PM11/2/2006 2:55:11 PM
The Strange Death of Broadband ISDN  7
Here are some of the things that were, and are, needed to bring global services
into being, roughly in the order the problem came up, and was solved.
1. Connecting to a service
Hosts and gateways operate on IP addresses for routing purposes. It is problematic,
however, to use IP addresses (and port numbers) as end-system service identifi ers
as well. Apart from the usability issues of having to deal with 64.233.160.4 as the
name of a computer hosting a service, IP addresses can also be reassigned to hosts
on a regular basis via DHCP or NAT, so lack stability. A way to map symbolic
names, such as www.google.com, to an IP address is required.  is was achieved
by the global distributed directory infrastructure of the Domain Name System,
DNS, also dating back to 1983.
2. Interacting with a service
Part of writing an application is to write the user interface. In the early years of
computing, this was simply a command line interpreter into which the user typed
cryptic codes if he or she could recall them.  e introduction of graphical user
interfaces in the late eighties made the user interface designer’s task considerably
more complex but the result was intuitive and user-friendly.  e introduction
of HTML and the fi rst Internet browsers in the early nineties created a standard
client easily used to access arbitrary applications via HTTP across the Internet.
3. Connecting to the Internet
Research labs, businesses, and the military could connect to the Internet in the
eighties. But there was little reason for most businesses or residences to connect
until the Web brought content and a way to get at it. Initially the existing tele-
phone network was (ineffi ciently) used for mass connection by the widespread
availability of cheap modems. We should not forget the catalysing eff ects of cheap
PCs with dial-up clients and built-in modems at this time. More recently DSL
and cable modems have delivered a widely available high-speed data-centric ac-
cess service.

4. Finding new services
Once the Web got going, search engines were developed to index and rank
Web sites.  is was the point where Altavista, Yahoo!, and later Google came to
prominence.
5. Paying for services
 ere is no billing infrastructure for the Internet, although there have been a
number of attempts to support, for example, micro-payments. In the event, the
existing credit card infrastructure was adapted by providers of services such as
Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 7Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 7 11/2/2006 2:55:11 PM11/2/2006 2:55:11 PM
8  Business Strategies for the Next-Generation Network
Amazon.com. More recently specialist Internet payment organizations such as
PayPal have been widely used (96 million accounts at time of writing).
6. Supporting application-application services
Computer applications also need to talk to other applications across the Inter-
net.  ey do not use browsers.  e framework of choice uses XML, and we saw
detailed architectures from Microsoft, with .NET, and the Java community with
Java EE and companion editions, mostly since 2000.
7. Interactive multimedia services
Interactive multimedia was the hardest issue for the Internet.  e reason is that
supporting interactive multimedia is a systems problem, and a number of issues
have to be simultaneously resolved, as we discuss next. So while for Broadband
ISDN, voice/multimedia was the fi rst problem, for the Internet, it has also been
the last (or at least, the most recent) problem.
Multimedia Sessions on the Internet
Layering telephone-type functions onto the existing Internet architecture is a
challenge. Some of the basics are just not there. For example, the Web uses names
asymmetrically.  ere are a huge number of Web sites out there that can be ac-
cessed by anonymous users with browsers. Type in the URL, or use a search engine.
Click and go. But the Web site doesn’t normally try to fi nd you, and you lack a
URL.  e Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) by contrast names all its

endpoints with telephone numbers. A telephone number is mapped to a device
such as a mobile phone or a physical line for a fi xed telephone. Various companies
provide phone number directory services, and the phone itself provides a way to
dial and to alert the called user by ringing.  e basic Internet structure of routers
and computer hosts provides little help in emulating this architecture. Somehow
users need to register themselves with some kind of telephony directory on the
Internet, and then there has to be some signaling mechanism that can look up
the called party in that directory, and place the call.  e IETF (Internet Engineer-
ing Task Force) has been developing a suitable signaling protocol (SIP—Session
Initiation Protocol) since around 1999 and many VoIP companies are using it
(Skype is a conspicuous exception, using a distributed peer-to-peer architecture
with a proprietary protocol as we discuss in chapter 9).
 e next problem is a phone equivalent. A PC can handle sophisticated audio
and video, multi-way conferencing, and data sharing. A PC, however, cannot
be easily carried in a small pocket. Lightweight and physically small portable
IP hosts are likely to have only a subset of a PC’s multimedia capabilities and
cannot know in advance the capabilities of the called party’s terminal—more
Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 8Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 8 11/2/2006 2:55:12 PM11/2/2006 2:55:12 PM
The Strange Death of Broadband ISDN  9
problems for the signaling protocol. A further reason for the relative immaturity
of interactive multimedia services is the lack of wide-coverage mobile networks
and terminals that are optimized for IP and permit Internet access.  e further
diff usion of WiFi, WiMAX and possibly lower charges on 3G cellular networks
will hopefully resolve this over the next few years.
Can the Internet, and IP networks in general, really be trusted to carry high-
quality isochronous traffi c (real-time interactive audio-video)? Whole books
have been written on the topic (Crowcroft, Handley, and Wakeman 1999) and
it remains contentious. My own view is as follows. In the access part of the net-
work, where bandwidth is constrained and there are a relatively small number
of fl ows, some of which may be high-bandwidth (e.g., movie downloads), some

form of class of service prioritisation and call admission control will be necessary.
In the network itself, traffi c is already suffi ciently aggregated so that statistical
eff ects normalise the traffi c load even at the carrier’s Provider Edge router. With
proper traffi c engineering, Quality of Service (QoS) is automatically assured
and complex, expensive bandwidth management schemes are not required. As
traffi c continues to grow, this situation will get better, not worse due to the law
of large numbers. Many carriers, implementing architectures such as IMS (IP
Multimedia Subsystem), take a diff erent view today and are busy specifying and
implementing complex per session resource reservation schemes and bandwidth
management functions, as they historically did in the PSTN. My belief is that
by saddling themselves with needless cost and complexity that fails to scale, they
will succeed only in securing for themselves a competitive disadvantage.  is
point applies regardless whether, for commercial reasons, the carriers introduce
and rigidly enforce service classes on their networks or not—the services classes
will inherently be aggregated and will not require per-fl ow bandwidth manage-
ment in the core.
After establishing a high-quality multimedia session, the next issue of concern
is how secure that call is likely to be. By default, phone calls have never been
intrinsically secure as the ease of wiretaps (legal interception) demonstrates. Most
people’s lack of concern about this is based upon the physical security of the phone
company’s equipment, and the diffi culties of hacking into it from dumb or closed
end-systems like phones. One of the most striking characteristics of the Internet is
that it permits open access in principle from any host to any other host.  is means
that security has to be explicitly layered onto a service. Most people are familiar
with secure browser access to Web sites (HTTPS) using an embedded protocol
in the browser and the Web server (SSL—Secure Sockets Layer) which happens
entirely automatically from the point of view of a user. Deploying a symmetric
security protocol (e.g., IPsec) between IP-phones for interactive multimedia has
been more challenging, and arguably we are not quite there yet. IMS implements
hop-by-hop encryption, partially to allow for lawful interception. Most VoIP today

is not encrypted—again, Skype is a notable exception. As I observe in chapter
Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 9Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 9 11/2/2006 2:55:12 PM11/2/2006 2:55:12 PM
10  Business Strategies for the Next-Generation Network
9, Skype looked for a while to be proof against third-party eavesdropping, but
following the eBay acquisition, I would not bet on it now.
Architecture vs. Components
 e Internet was put together by many people and organizations, loosely coupled
through standard protocols developed by the IETF. Some of it works well, some
Internet services are beta or worse.  e world of the Internet is exploratory,
incremental, and sometimes revolutionary and it’s an open environment where
anyone can play and innovate.  e libertarian ideology associated with the IETF
theorizes this phenomenon.  e IETF saw (and sees) itself as producing enabling
technologies, not closed solutions. Each enabling technology—security protocols,
signaling protocols, new transport protocols—is intended to open the door for
new kinds of applications. To date, this is exactly what has occurred.
 e Internet model is disaggregated—the opposite of vertically integrated.
Because the Internet is globally accessible and presents support for an ever-increas-
ing set of protocols (equating to capabilities), anyone with a new service concept
can write applications, distribute a free client (if a standard browser will not do),
and attempt to secure a revenue stream.  is creates a huge dilemma for carriers.
In the Internet model, they are infrastructure providers, providing ubiquitous IP
connectivity. In the classic tee-shirt slogan “IP over everything,” the carriers are
meant to be the “everything.” But “everything” here is restricted to physical fi ber
and optical networking in the network core; copper, coax, and radio in the ac-
cess network; plus an overlay of routing/forwarding and allied services such as
DNS. When it comes to end-user services, whether ISP services such as e-mail
and hosting; session services such as interactive multimedia, instant messaging,
fi le transfer; or E-business services such as Amazon, eBay, e-Banking, there is no
special role allocated for carriers—the Internet model says anyone can play.
 is thought is entirely alien to the carriers, who have long believed they were

more in the services business than mere bit transporters. Carriers have always
wanted to move “up the value chain” whether they were off ering network-hosted
value-added services or integrated solutions to their enterprise customers. As the
carriers came to terms with the success of the Internet, and the collapse of Broad-
band ISDN, they attempted their own theorisation of the Internet. Not in the
spirit of the libertarian open model of the IETF, but more akin to the vertically-
integrated and closed models they were used to.  ey proposed to integrate
Data and media transport
Interactive multimedia session management
Computer application support



Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 10Seel_AU8035_C001.indd 10 11/2/2006 2:55:12 PM11/2/2006 2:55:12 PM